


tenderloin

by plastics



Category: Beautiful Boy (2018)
Genre: Family Drama, Gen, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Canon, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28085283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/pseuds/plastics
Summary: It took a lot of effort to David to mentally separate his sons from himself, and from each other.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	tenderloin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostmagician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostmagician/gifts).



> This alludes to Nic and David's novels outside of Beautiful Boy, but I have not read any of them them, and this fic is only based on the fictionalization presented in the movie.
> 
> As an additional warning: The "Past Drug Addiction" tag is not referring to the distant past, and this fic is still very focused on addiction. None of the medical or philosophical approaches in this fic should be treated as factual advice.

Jasper didn’t speak as they wheeled him out of the dentist’s office. His body was languid, face slack. He got himself into the Subaru, but David buckled his seatbelt. When David asked, “How are you feeling, buddy?” he only got a gargled grunt in return.

Then David drove to CVS to pick up Jasper's prescriptions. He didn’t want to linger—Jasper still mostly unconscious in the car, still just barely a man, it would have been easier if Karen hadn’t been called in today of all days—but these places were only sometimes a free-for-all, apparently, so he wandered the aisles. Would Jasper find a Get Well Soon! card funny or tedious? Would he still want strawberry and banana bottled smoothies, or would a berry blend be a welcome back-up sometime soon? If David bought him candy, would he let it melt in his mouth, or would he be too tempted to chew?

David and Karen had talked about this part. Extensively. The bottom teeth were growing in sideways. The surgery was necessary, but the pills, there were options. Alternatives. Ibuprofen. Acetaminophen. Aspirin. 

“But what if he’s in pain?” Karen asked. Jasper was a smart kid, not too squeamish, but smart people in pain did stupid things. Took too much Motrin. Snuck into the few bottles of wine his parents still dared keep around. Called up his buddies whose parents weren’t so careful.

And so, opioids reentered the Sheff household.

Once reaching their living room couch, Jasper stayed awake exactly long enough to cough his bloody gauze pads onto his chest, leaving them there for David to dispose of. Daisy’s music was still loud enough to be heard downstairs, but the girl herself poked around the landing as David crossed through the foyer. 

“How was it?” she asked, glancing over at Jasper’s sleeping form.

“Boring.”

“Did he do anything funny when he was high?”

“Nope.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “What are we doing for dinner? Does it need to be, like, soft?”

“Oh, no, he’s not going to be eating anything real for a few days,” David responded. Did they not go over this with her? He can’t remember. Maybe they decided it wasn’t relevant, maybe she ignored them. Such was the life of having teenagers in the house. “Why don’t you choose? Something good.”

His hands itched for something to do. Daisy nodded, a reflexive I’m-listening, but it was another moment before she said, “Nothing he’d be too mad to miss out on. Or, I don’t know, gnocchi or something? Like, so he could reheat it later?”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” David said, trying not to sound so sincere that it put her off. He thought of kneading, forming individual gnocchi, pesto—yes, it’d be perfect.

Sometime later, while Daisy and David were rolling forks over dough, the TV clicked on in the other room.

David made the drive down to Santa Monica alone. They’d talked about that, too. The kids missed each other, too old to really be kept apart if they didn’t want to be, but Karen and David weren’t yet so obsolete that they couldn’t attempt to set the tone. It worked out, that time.

The new place, a sober co-op, was towards the edge of town, as much as such a thing existed in Southern California. David recognized some of the roommates’ names from good times. It seemed like a decent set-up.

Nic had been sober again for fourteen months at that point. It was a good amount of time—it could’ve been much longer. 

Most of the time, David was better than thinking that way. Or he tried very, very hard to be. The Jasper situation was just putting him on edge. But also, he was struggling to think of what to say to Nic once he saw him. A year ago, they weren’t speaking again. Two years ago, there was a girl, a growing career, what seemed like real passion and dedication.

All those things could come back. Or, if they weren’t actually making Nic happy, he could find something better. David knew that. It was important to know that. But each reset was still devastating. 

The anxiety peaked as he saw a familiar, lanky form unfold itself from a garden chair, then shrank to the size of a pebble as he got out of the car and could look his son in the face, feel him within his arms.

“It’s so good to see you,” Nic said as he leaned back, smile big and genuine.

“You too, kid.”

  
  


The night of Jasper’s fall jazz band recital, he texted David and Karen at 12:41 a.m. to say that he would be staying at Jules Moreno’s house. The Morenos were good people—their families were close. He was quite cheery when he reappeared the following morning, early enough to claim his fair share of pancakes, although he declined to provide any additional details. He was not obviously hungover.

But they knew.

His fork froze an inch over his plate, three cubes of pancake stuffed onto its tongs. He responded, “I don’t do it a lot. Or, like, ever,” and he might have gotten away with that much if he hadn’t added, _“Everyone_ does it.”

David’s breath froze in his chest. Karen was the one who said, “Sweetie, that is a dangerous, untrue line of thought. You know we’re going to have to ground you.”

“What the hell,” Jasper whined. “It’s not like Daisy doesn’t—”

Daisy, who’d been pretending that their backyard was very interesting, snapped to attention. “Shut up, Jasper, don’t fucking bring me into—”

“Language at the table, both of you,” David finally said, voice louder than he meant it to be, and, hell, when had he turned into such a square of a parent? He brought it back down as he continued, “I think we’ve been very clear that honesty is the most important thing in this house. You lied to us, Jasper, about something that you know can be particularly dangerous in this family.”

Jasper rolled his eyes hard. His chair scraped as he pushed back from the table. “Whatever. A few fucking Smirnoff Ices isn’t going to turn me into Nic.”

David waited a full day to call Alicia. She answered the call on the fourth ring, and they made small talk about town politics and other parents. When the moment opened up, David said, calmly, without judgment, “I hope Jasper wasn’t any trouble the other night.”

Her response was equally measured. “Of course not. He’s a good boy.”

Without permission, a sharp anger twisted in his chest. He exhaled all the unfair things he could say out through his nose, then returned to say, “I’m not angry that you let him stay. You know we all believe in risk reduction. But not calling us? We can’t—if something is going on with Jasper, we need to know. We can’t be caught off guard.” 

  
  


“It’s spring break for the kids, right? They’re still busy?”

They’re sitting on the patio of a bar and grill Nic likes, a short walk from the apartment. It was close enough that they could see the ocean but not smell it. Nic looked tired, but David looked the same. Otherwise, he seemed comfortable. His skin was tanned and his hair a little longer, but well-kept. The question was phrased casually, but the want, the potential for hurt, wasn’t buried deeply.

“Daisy really wanted to come, but she got into that art camp,” David answered, truthfully, but he wasn’t sure if it wasn’t going to carry through until he was saying, “and Jasper just had his wisdom teeth taken out Wednesday.”

“Ah,” Nic said. He nodded. The sadness rose to the surface, along with acceptance.

They ordered an appetizer, and Nic got a smoothie along with one of the pricier fish fillets on the menu. David would be paying—it felt good to be able to give something so little. They talked about the weather, Kelly Slater, music, Karen’s work until, finally, between french fries dipped in garlic aioli, Nic said, “I’m almost finished with the book.”

The one he’d started with this reset. Relapse. David nodded, then asked, “How are you feeling about it?”

“Like shit,” Nic said. “I mean, not really. A normal amount of shitty to feel about your writing. It felt good to get out, though. Necessary.”

David nodded again. Swells were easier to predict than their conversations sometimes, but this was good. They needed to keep talking. “Do you have any ideas about… next?”

It was a relief when Nic nodded, quick but not over-eager, like he was trying to prove something too soon. “I have a few ideas for fiction. A few of my buddies back in L.A. are starting to make some ground with their projects, and they said there’s room for me when I’m ready, so I might, like, get into scriptwriting, too?”

“That sounds great,” David said, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “as long as you’re not rushing yourself. Or putting yourself into bad situations.”

It was still ironic having Nic look at him with some amount of pitying acceptance. Even with the setbacks, Nic was so obviously an adult now, and with it came the ability to see right through the parental charade of David seeming like he knew what the fuck he was doing.

David was so grateful that Nic still chose to listen.

“Yeah, Dad, I know.”

They went biking, looked for souvenirs that Nic insisted on paying for, retreated back to David’s hotel room to stare blankly at their laptops before turning their attention back to terrible movies on TV. 

The morning David was meant to leave, Nic insisted on having him over for breakfast. The apartment was empty, his roommates already gone on account of having a more regular schedule than two writers. He made Bisquick pancakes two at a time in a frying pan while David ate his eggs. They were a little over-crispy, and David was supposed to watch his cholesterol— _old_ —but sometimes exceptions had to be made. 

David sipped his coffee and thought to himself that this needed to be the last time. He wanted to slap the spatula out of Nic’s hand, take him by the shoulders, and hold him there until he promised that _this was the last time,_ and he’d have to mean it. 

It wasn’t how any of this worked. Relapses weren’t because Nic didn’t mean it enough. He was sick. Sick enough that it overwhelmed who he was as a person, made him lie, cheat, steal? Throw everything away? 

Yes. If it was a tumor in Nic’s frontal lobe, David wouldn’t still struggle to accept its existence fully. If he was a perfectly empathetic person, David wouldn’t have to constantly remind himself, _If it was a tumor._ He wouldn’t constantly host those internal debates: If it was a tumor, no one would question him for seeking the most effective treatments, stripping his home of potential carcinogens, checking and checking again for its re-emergence, like reigning in biology was a reasonable goal. He wouldn’t be bracing for the next blow as his son plopped into the seat next to him.

Nic still flooded his plate with syrup, letting it seep across his plate. He got halfway through his first pancake before he said, “You know, in the last place I was at, they thought I had an eating disorder.”

“Oh,” David said, almost light-headed from how quickly his mind raced, trying to catalog a whole new thing that he’d missed, accidentally encouraged—

“No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to freak you out,” Nic said, pointedly shoving a piece of egg into his mouth. “I don’t. I was doing a bunch of drugs that threw my entire metabolism out of whack, and they decided more diagnoses made more sense than just, like, recognizing that. That’s, um, kind of what the book is about. The more bullshit side of rehab and recovery and shit. And I’m still doing good, I really am, but the shit part is real too, and I just. I still wanted to talk to you about it before anything got too serious with publishers or anything.”

David sat in silence for a moment. A year spent writing, undermining his recovery. It felt dangerous. But was it really, if he was still sitting here sober? How had Nic described it? Necessary. David had been wrong about what’s necessary for Nic so many times he lost count. 

“Okay,” David said, “Thank you for telling me. I hope—I know that this hasn’t been easy on your end. You don’t have to censor yourself on my behalf.”

It felt thin, like a line torn directly from a therapy workbook. It probably was. But Nic nodded and said, “Thanks.”

They hugged again before David got in the car. He said, “Jasper’s spring recital is the last week of May. If you can make it up, I think it’d mean a lot to him.”

“Yeah, I know we’ve been talking about,” Nic responded. “Sounds good. I’d love to.”

  
  
  


During their midweek grocery run—it’s true, David hadn’t realized how much healthy teenagers ate, even ones with hobbled mouths—Karen proposed a second stop.

“A refill?” he said, trying to keep his voice even. That was what they decided on. Honesty. No shame. Observant but hands off. Take away the thrill of sneaking an extra cookie when you can simply ask for one.

David was terrified.

Karen shook her head. “Disposal.”

She explained how Jasper had taken one dose Friday afternoon, slept it off, and hadn’t touched them since. (Karen counted, just to be sure.) His recovery was going smoothly, although he was still on soft food with no small, jagged edges. 

Nic hadn’t sought out everything right away, either. Skipped stepping stones. It wasn’t the same as being sure. But it was, hopefully, a week that was not completely botched. Sometimes that was the most you could hope for in parenting.

David’s fingers itched. His two sons were not the same, but Nic still rose again in his mind. Had they learned anything in the last decade? An endless supply of hard facts about what methamphetamines will do to a person, how quickly and completely, but it still incomplete. Even in recovery, Nic was a liar. David had seen it himself before, the days where Nic meant it and when he was saying it because he knew it was what people wanted to hear and how it could cover up so much. That wasn’t a surprise. Everyone did it, to an extent. And it wasn’t like David himself wasn’t given pause over the things Nic was expected to repeat. A lot of God talk. They’d never been a religious family. They still weren’t.

Maybe Nic would be open to sharing more from his book, David thought. As much as he was willing to share specifically with David. He could feel another question brewing.


End file.
